Justice Between Plantation and Port

Abstract

Chapter 2 explores how negotiations between court participants and magistrates through court proceedings, as in some sedition cases, untangled the concentric circles of authority that emanated from the innermost court chambers (especially the registrar’s chamber, where legal documentation was kept) out past insular coastlines into the haziest maritime jurisdictions. This chapter delves into the public and private aspects of court proceedings. It tracks court participants as they moved among French legal entrepôts through both formal and informal legal channels, such as judicial appeals, interjudicial correspondence, and traveling from one court to another.